Buddhist Temple in Hangzhou, China make high quality compost for their tea plantation

The temple’s name is commonly literally translated as ‘Temple of the Soul’s Retreat’. The Lingyin Temple was founded in 326AD and is the most recognized temple in Hangzhou with a long history of about 1 700 years. The temple is situated at the west end of the beautiful West Lake and the temple is nested between Feilai and Beigao Mountain. This is one of the largest Buddhist temples in China and attracts thousands of visitors every day.

Today about 300 monks lives here. According to the Buddhist tradition the monks only eat vegetables. When it is time to eat an encirclement to food takes place by ringing in this bell.

In this temple there is also a lot of education for monks taking place. Therefore from time to time it can be up to 500 monks at this temple.

If you are in the Hangzhou area a visit is a must. In the cliffs around the mountain there are many statues to look at. The statues are carved out in the rocks in the forest. The most famous statue is called ‘The laughing monk’ – a statue that is about 9 meters wide.

The temple is focused on sustainability and has implemented candles that are reusable as a way to minimize the amount of waste they produce. Another example is that the temple only sell incense sticks of top quality, these make the air a bit better around the temple due to the fact that the smoke is less than from incence sticks from lower quality.

In the valleys around the Lingyin temple they grow tea and instead of using chemical fertilizers the Abbot wants to use the compost from the food waste in the temple. He decided that he wanted the most natural and highest quality compost possible and decided to install our Big Hanna composter.

At the temple they produce about 1 000 kg food waste per week that until now have been sent to landfill. To compost the food waste is a new procedure to the monks and at the installation the interest in how the machine and biological process worked was very high.

Please contact our distributor in China www.bzmach.com for more information about Big Hanna in Chinese or to see the composter in operation.For more information about Big Hanna composter www.bighanna.com